A Memoir of Jane Austen

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CHAPTER IV
Removal from Steventon––Residences at Bath and at Southampton––
Settling at Chawton
THE family removed to Bath in the spring of 1801, where they
resided first at No. 4 Sydney Terrace, and afterwards in Green
Park Buildings.° I do not know whether they were at all attracted
to Bath by the circumstance that Mrs. Austen’s only brother, Mr.
Leigh Perrot,° spent part of every year there. The name of Perrot,
together with a small estate at Northleigh° in Oxfordshire, had
been bequeathed to him by a great uncle. I must devote a few
sentences to this very old and now extinct branch of the Perrot
family; for one of the last survivors, Jane Perrot, married to a
Walker, was Jane Austen’s great grandmother, from whom she
derived her Christian name. The Perrots were settled in Pembrokeshire
at least as early as the thirteenth century. They were
probably some of the settlers whom the policy of our Plantagenet
kings placed in that county, which thence acquired the name of
‘England beyond Wales,’ for the double purpose of keeping open
a communication with Ireland from Milford Haven, and of overawing
the Welsh. One of the family seems to have carried out this
latter purpose very vigorously; for it is recorded of him that he
slew twenty-six men of Kemaes, a district of Wales, and one wolf.
The manner in which the two kinds of game are classed together,
and the disproportion of numbers, are remarkable; but probably
at that time the wolves had been so closely killed down, that
lupicide was become a more rare and distinguished exploit
than homicide. The last of this family died about 1778, and their
property was divided between Leighs and Musgraves, the larger
portion going to the latter. Mr. Leigh Perrot pulled down the
mansion, and sold the estate to the Duke of Marlborough, and
the name of these Perrots is now to be found only on some
monuments in the church of Northleigh.
Mr. Leigh Perrot was also one of several cousins to whom a life